Plucking the Weeds to Save the Garden
At a certain age, coming to court is like weeding a potentially beautiful garden. It’s about rooting out the bad stuff; encouraging the good.
Weeding, of course, is no fun. It’s not supposed to be.
Especially if you’re a kid and your mom or dad has to take time off work to be there with you.
Especially if you can’t wiggle out of trouble with a lame excuse about how the cop had a bad attitude or how delicious the Big Macs are compared to the crap they serve in the school cafeteria or how the line getting through the metal detector was too long and so you decided to cool your heels at the doughnut shop across the street for a while.
Especially if you’re guilty as sin and facing a fine or community service for ditching class, stealing a book, running a stop sign.
In a world that doesn’t offer much else, kids inflate the concept of respect. Court is the Big Dis.
But a judge doesn’t care if you’re a big pants on the streets. He’ll patronize you: “You know what ‘stop’ means? It doesn’t mean ‘almost’ or ‘sort of.’ ” “You know why education is important?” “You know why we have curfews?”
The judge will be wearing a black robe and sitting under a seal of the state of California. He’ll be flanked by the Stars and Stripes and the California Bear. His tone might be friendly, but when you smile and answer his questions--”You understand that school is good for you?”--trust me, you won’t feel too happy.
But you will sit there and take it.
And you know what else?
Your mom will be nervous. When the judge asks you how she feels about the graffiti you sprayed on the wall, about how you ditched class when she thought you were in school, about why you ran that red light on Hollywood Boulevard at 2 a.m. when you said you were at a slumber party in Palmdale, she might just lose it.
And then you’ll probably cry too.
The judge will smile kindly and tell you he hopes the only time he sees you again is when you return to court with a letter from your principal proving you came to school for two months in a row with no unexplained absences. The judge won’t hold his breath, of course, but he has faith in you that you may not even have in yourself. See that it isn’t misplaced, OK?
Next.
*
David Searcy has been a cop, a high school band teacher, an attorney. Today, at 62, he is a gardener of sorts, nipping bad behavior before it blooms into serious crime. He is supervising referee of the Juvenile Traffic Division of Los Angeles Superior Court.
Actually, “traffic court” is a misnomer. All manner of misdemeanor and infraction finds resolution in these small, unappealing rooms in an ugly building south of downtown.
In this court, justice is swift--Searcy and his colleagues spend an average of six minutes per case. Doesn’t sound like much, but six minutes can feel like eternity to a 14-year-old. Especially with her parents sitting next to her, as the law requires.
The little ones, Searcy says, walk in quaking. “The 10-year-olds think they’re coming to San Quentin,” he says, in a tone that makes you understand that this is a good thing.
For the last six months, truants have received tickets that bring them to court. The City Council’s new truancy ordinance--aimed at the district’s estimated 30,000-plus students who are absent from school each day with no written excuse--allows cops to cite minors for ditching.
One day last week, nearly 200 cases flowed through the 10 small courtrooms of Searcy’s division, many of them truancy tickets. Here, the aim is not so much punishment as accountability: Haul a kid in for truancy, threaten her with a $135 fine and she may see the point in attending school.
Truancy is like that heady first puff of a funny-smelling cigarette. It feels good but it’s dangerous. Playing hooky, say school district experts, is the single most powerful predictor of delinquent behavior.
Truancy fertilizes temptation.
*
Judges try to leave their prejudices at the door. But teenagers are stereotypes on two legs. There’s the kid with the baggy clothes, the shaved head, the swagger. He’s in court for failing to appear on a truancy ticket. Gang member, the judge thinks. Definitely.
There’s the girl who stares blankly, ignores the questions and says she can’t remember stealing a book at school. Sullen. Angry.
Searcy gets angry too. He is a gentle man, but he’s also a former cop--you can hear it in his voice when the lame excuses or pointless digressions push his patience meter into the red zone. In these two cases, though, he learns something about stereotyping that he thought he already knew.
Searcy grew up in a boys’ home. He knows how it feels to be judged, to be corralled by cops just because. “We weren’t a gang,” he says of the boys he lived with, “but we looked like one.”
And so he is chastened when the kid he took for gang material turns out to have been at City of Hope undergoing treatment for leukemia when he was supposed to be in court. This explains the shaved head and baggy clothes.
The sullen thief?
A mentally retarded 18-year-old whose mother weeps inconsolably when the ticket--for stealing a coloring book--is dismissed.
The innocent get the consideration they deserve.
The guilty get second chances: Act right, we’ll erase the fines. Do good, we’ll pretend this never happened. Become the lovely human blooms you are meant to be.
Do wrong and eventually face your fate in adult court, where the weed whacker awaits.
* Robin Abcarian’s column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Readers may write to her at the Los Angeles Times, Life & Style, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053.
